------------------------------------------------------- APRIL 28, 1973 ------------------------------------------------------- Source: Melody Maker (from the Legendary Roxi Collection) Squire Route By Chris Welch Modern rock man can react in strange ways to the rigours of travelling. Encircling the globe, almost as frequently as an airline pilot, he is liable to nervous breakdowns, bouts of violence or other eccentric behaviour. After a brace of American tours, I have known musicians to adopt strange religions, hurl colour TV sets out of windows, give away all their wealth or become vegetarians. Fortunately, Chris Squire of Yes is an easy going kind of guy, who would probably respond to an earthquake by uttering a mild "tut, tut." Weeks of flying from Australia to Japan and across America would reduce others to hollow husks. But Chris remains cool and collected as Yes trundle in ever increasing circles. It came as no surprise when Chris telephoned me at 3 a.m. this week from Phoenix, Arizona, for a bit of chat. "We've been working every night for 12 days non-stop," he revealed on a line that occasionally developed a bad attack of static. "For five weeks now we've been on our famous round the world tour. But I feel okay -- we've had a few days off in L.A. to recover from the flight from Australia. "We started off in Japan where we did five gigs in ten days. It was fantastic -- a bit like Beatle-mania. They were really good audiences and I think we sold a few albums which is the usual idea. "From Japan we went to sunny Australia and from there to America. Sydney was a bit like London five years ago -- all mini-skirts. And it was lovely and hot. "We saw Keith Moon there doing his Tommy show. It seems that rock is completely international now and fans everywhere know about our music. "This is our seventh tour of the States we're on now and you get used to the pace. The secret is to make it work for you and fall into a natural rhythm. It takes time to acquire the art of living on the road. "But one of the things that stops us getting bored is playing new places. And we spend time writing songs in each other's bedrooms, strumming guitars and playing chess and getting druhnk. So it's not too much of a stagnant situation. "There has been a lot of variation to the numbers in the act, and we have expanded quite a few. We're looking forward to doing our next studio LP and we'll do a major tour of England before the end of the year. The 'live' triple album has gone gold in America -- I was wondering if they'll give us three gold discs each. "The music on the albums was recorded from February last year onwards, but Alan is on about 85 per cent of the tracks after Bill left. We're very happy with the albums, and right now we're just working hard and looking forward to rehearsing and recording. "The music has changed a lot in the last year, and Alan White has been a big influence on the amount of improvisation we do. When we learn a new song, it takes us a year to perfect it on stage, then we move on to something new. "We have dropped some songs -- we don't do 'I've Seen All Good People' anymore or 'Perpetual Change.' Mainly our show is from 'Close To The Edge.' We do 'Roundabout' and at the Rainbow we started to revive 'Starship Trooper.' It's our encore number. "Rick is enjoying a lot of personal success, and he's doing interviews all day. Steve is still madly buying guitars. His favourite occupation is to find a little gem in some back-street music store. "We do feel we've been away from home too long, but we'll do a full-scale 25-day tour of England as soon as we've done the next LP, so that we'll have something new to play. "And we'd rather offer it to England first because they have the most critical audiences in the world." Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, inquiries, corrections, or additions, contact yitp@yesservices.com